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27 August 2010

Carey Get Out Your Cane, I'll Put On My Finest Notes From The News

I have returned! The family and I are still working through the cold -- and summer colds are indeed the worst kind -- but I'm feeling with it enough to post today. Thanks for your indulgence in giving me a pass yesterday.
Onward to the bumpers!

We'll start off with something unexpectedly interesting: The ever-intriguing, occasionally-batshit Angelina Jolie is slated to make her debut as a director. She's going to direct a screenplay she wrote herself (!), which is described as a "love story set during the Bosnian war, focus[ing] on a Serbian man and a Bosnian woman" who meet on the eve of the conflict, and who must then reconcile their feelings for each other against that conflict. Jolie will presumably find time to direct this untitled derivative hackwork story sometime in the next year, in between prepping for her next starring role, banging Brad Pitt, and adopting her 82nd orphan child.

Speaking of Brad Pitt, Pajiba's mysterious Hollywood Cog has shared a story that will probably amount to nothing but which, as Dustin Rowles notes, is pretty damn cool. The long and the short of it is that Pitt has been approached to star in a film possibly directed by Scott Cooper (who directed Crazy Heart), being produced by Irwin Winkler, from a script by Jay Cocks (The Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York), based on the great song "Brownsville Girl" by none other than Bob Dylan. This would be awesome if it all actually came together, but knowing the way Hollywood works? A year from now it will have been re-written into a starring vehicle for Rob Schneider and Pauly Shore.

Jim Henson's family has donated ten of the earliest Muppets, characters the legendary puppeteer created for the 1955 show Sam and Friends, to the Smithsonian Institution. Among the Muppets in the collection are a character called "Harry the Hipster" (insert Williamsburg, Brooklyn reference here) and the original Kermit the Frog. And for once I have no snarky joke here. This is a Good Thing. Henson's talents and legacy should be preserved for future generations. Good on Jane and his kids for making this contribution.

Shit that makes you feel old, dept:: today marks the 20th anniversary of Stevie Ray Vaughan's death. And if that isn't enough, yesterday Macaulay Culkin turned 30. In other news, YOU GODDAMN KIDS GET OFF MY LAAAWWWWWNNNNN . . .

Here's a special treat for my hometown folks in Chicago: Video footage of Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples performing a cover version of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Wrote a Song For Everyone", which appears on Staples' new Tweedy-produced album, You Are Not Alone. If the clip in the link hasn't sold you, try streaming the title track here. Honestly? I would listen to Mavis Staples singing the actuarial tables on my insurance policies, so you better believe this is on my Christmas wish list. Of course, Anna Paquin is on my Christmas wish list too, so maybe I need to revise my list a little.

Speaking of revisions, I don't think I could improve on the following if I tried: "I wish this project would die. Not even die. Just disappear, into the void, wink out of existence so that we'd never have to think about it again. But no. We're getting a sequel we don't want to a movie that was absolutely awful. Ghost Rider wasn't just a bad comic book movie, it's just a bad movie period. Bad script. Bad directing. Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad, bad, bad. But Hollywood doesn't give a baby-punching fuck about that." As they say on the internet: THIS.

And finally: Apparently 1980s nostalgia has run its course. Either that, or Gen-Xers are starting to contemplate the skeins of grey in their beards and at their temples, are starting to feel the icy cold fingers of the Reaper clutching at their cynical, ironic hearts, and while getting ready to turn around and tell him he needs more cowbell, they are in the mood for a little nostalgia. Whatever the case, Pitchfork.com has created a list of the 50best music videos of the 1990s. The list is actually a pretty good one, though like all lists of this nature it's highly subjective, hardly definitive, and could use more boobs. And more cowbell.

That said, Bluto thinks it's headbangin' awesome:

Okelly dokelly kids, I'm out. Working on a new Track By Track that should be making its appearance here soon, though I may not have it done before Monday. Be well, give 'em hell, and MORE COWBELL!